Teach About 2

Prejudice: Prejudice is indeed a part of the human temperament – the result of actual, perceived and imagined differences that divide individuals and groups. No one is devoid of it, or beyond it. It is prompted by an individual’s identity and affiliations, and passed down from generation to generation. Prejudice is inherent and universal, insidious and menacing, perennial and lasting. Through discrimination and exclusion, prejudice denies victims equal opportunity and equal protection. It usurps rights, prospects, affluence and dignity. It excludes and alienates victims, exacerbating their own prejudices. The intolerance it breeds fuels ideology, often to tragic ends. Indeed, prejudice is a major source of violence and has been the cause of history’s barbaric ethnic cleansings and genocides.

Often, bases for prejudice are so inanely concocted as to be almost comical. The color white is gifted with a feigned supremacy. White doves symbolize peace. Angels are white to show superiority. Brides wear white gowns to declare purity. While white can appear in natural and manmade objects, no human being’s skin has the hue of snow, milk, or white ceramic and fabric. Healthy human beings do not have white skin. And yet, people of European ancestry with blonde skin color call themselves white. Although the motivations for their intentions are entirely different, Americans of African ancestry similarly call themselves black – despite some of them having blonde skin tone, others brown, and many of those with black skin being less black than hundreds of millions of India’s Dravidians.

Despotism: Poverty and barbarity are the ensuant inevitability of despotism. To seize power, despots use violence. To keep power, they rely on violence, widen corruption and deepen prejudice, resulting in increased poverty and barbarity while denying people dignity and liberty. The presumption that people everywhere yearn for democracy is utterly spurious. There has never been a universal outcry for democracy. The recognition about the virtue of democracy is a recent phenomenon, accelerated by the aftermath of World War II. World is not witnessing steady increase in democracies. Inherent human bias for despotism has been highlighted recently by the Egyptian people’s revolution that brought back authoritarianism of the military. Conflicts in Ukraine and Libya reveal people’s lack of dedication to a democracy of equal rights and equal opportunities. Despotism in various forms currently rules a great majority of nations. Elections do not ensure democracy. Despite their regular elections, Egypt and Zimbabwe routinely violate human rights and political rights while India, Israel and Pakistan regularly infringe minority rights. Every democracy is abound in traits of authoritarianism, and no nation has flawless democracy.

Contrary to presumed notions, evidently, human mindset is programmed to be biased towards authoritarianism. The bias is seeded in parental demand for duplication and obedience, religions’ demand for submission and surrender, teachers’ demand for docility and malleability, and nations’ call for allegiance and patriotism. Societies invariably instill hero worship, turning children into fans and groupies, followers and subjects. The need to idolize, deify and worship reveals a human inability to accept the truth that none is unequal to anyone. Americans’ need for hero worship has reached an irrational level of desperation, akin to drug addiction, requiring a daily fix of deifying foreign monarchies or idolizing indigenous celebrities. While despotism exacerbates poverty and barbarity, flawless democracy increases affluence and enlightenment.

Every European democracy is flawed – in all of these countries, minorities are discriminated against, hereditary prerogatives are treasured and elites’ privileges are preserved. The growing powers of prime ministers corrode parliamentary systems. In so many ways American democracy is equally flawed, despite once being hailed as a unique experiment in participatory government. Although at one time the blasphemous notion that money is free speech was decried, it is now legally enshrined, lavishly offering rich people more free speech than poor people. The president is not elected directly by the people. Congress contributes most of the burgeoning flaw: The beauty of the system of checks and balances has been deflowered as Congress consents to presidential power grabs and servility to the executive branch. Its nauseating partisan ideology prevents it from repairing the judiciary’s indignity – earned by making laws, indulging in judicial activism, widening the ideological divide, proclaiming that money is free speech, and selecting a president. Congress enacted the shameful soldier-for-hire law, creating a poor people’s army with the sham name “volunteer army.” It vacuously retards economic growth and social progress by denying most Americans a realistic opportunity for upward mobility to the American Dream.

The current state of democratism is grossly wanting. Democracies routinely toady, rather than censure and shun, despots who violate human rights. They do nothing to help women achieve basic rights; every one of their leaders routinely pays obeisance to despotic oppressors who brazenly deny people political rights and women human rights. When visiting Muslim nations, the West’s ersatz feminists laughably wear hijab solely to curry favor with despots who deny women equality. Saudi women are neither independent nor liberated; American women are independent, but hardly liberated. Although women in America represent 51.5 percent of the population, they are grossly deprived of equality, power and wealth. The ratio in the U.S. Senate is one male for every 1.9 million male constituents, and one female for 8.2 million female constituents. Nothing is more nefariously barbaric than men denying their mothers equal rights.